I think this is a departure from TT rules, but that's not the point. First, it looks silly. Most casting animations include casters putting down their weapons. Wouldn't they be hacked to bits if doing this in melee combat? Secondly it's OP. Basically casters are ranged units that do not get penaltized when engaged by melee and have extreme mobility (as they do not spend strategic points for reloading). I think casting in melee should at least provoke a free attack like fleeing. Maybe there can be some "in combat" spells, like sisters aoe damage buff, that do not, but the majority of long range spells need to be penaltized in some way. Either make them unavailable in melee, add attack of opportunity when casting in melee or at least nerf mobility by adding strategic point cost to most spells so that the casters can't move as much after using their spells.

Another a bit unrelated topic is spell scaling. I feel like most level 1 spells are not even worth casting, it's better to just spend your offense points on attacking with your staff or whatever. Please consider making level 1 more powerful and the bonuses from level 2 not as extreme. Currently casters are useless at low levels and you're force to level them as a bit gimped melee if you dont buy them as level 6+ hired swords .

It would me more realistic (and maybe better fitting to the TT rules, don't rteally know that), but in the current state of the Game this is unlikely to be changed.

The Leader of Cult and Sisters need to cast in meele to make them effective, there are several rules wich would make a caster absolutely useless if you manage to engage them (sigmar purifer cant flee, for example) and the whole balancing oif casters in the Game is related to the current rules, all spells and casters need to be changed if you change that (and casters are mostly pretty weak atm anyways)

However, you still risk a Tzeentchs curse/divine wrath when you cast in meele, and its definitely NOT good to stun yourself or reduce your meele resistance ar loose all you points when engaged (while its not nice, but okay, if you are far away from enemies), so casting in meele comes with a risk.

laso the cost of strategic points to reload is compensated by divine wrath/tzeentchs curse. Casters pentalty is risking to loose points (of all kind), damage yourself, making yourself more vunerable or simply die instantly. If you lack of mobility with your Marksmen, try a bow or something together with quick reload. works wonders for mobility (and even allows some aimed shots)

All characters are pretty weak at the beginning, so are casters. you need to have a look on those youngblood students of arcane with no fighting experience in Mordheim, but if they survive theyre pretty strong. thats the deal, and I'm okay with that. I dont really need an easy levelup for casters, and they will probably too strong if they get strong spells right from the beginning (and making level 2 spells less attractive isnt a good option, they have double the cost, this musst be worth the effort!)

Thats my opinion, maybe the devs have a different view, but to be honest: i doubt it.

If you compare damage dealing spells to ranged weapons (spells are comet and lightning mostly):

Spells:
Pros:
-Ignore armor
-No strategic point cost
-Can be cast in melee
-Ignore cover as long as you have at least some LoS (range weapons get hit chance penalites)
-very long range (with range passives only hunting rifles can compete but they cost too much to reload)
Cons:
-Can be cursed/wrathed (chance can be mitigated by items, generally you can get off first two spells with no risk lategame)
-Magic resist values are generally higher on enchants making it more of a hard counter

Ranged weapons:
Pros:
-Can use special attacks (none of them really improves dpr though)
-Can overwatch
-Can crit
Cons:
-Harder time shooting anything engaged or in partial cover
-Less range on most weapon types
-Damage mitigated by armor (can be somewhat offset by using handguns/crossbows and/or armor penetration runes and passives, I consider this a fair trade vs curse chance on mages, but not the other stuff)
-Mobility limited by the need to reload (even a bow with quick reload level 2 takes 3 SP a turn to reload, which is almost a half on a hero and exactly a half on henchmen)

While both have their advantages and disadvantages, I think spells are a bit over the top so something has to go. Either range, mobility or melee casting. I would prefer melee casting as it looks stupid to me. Neither magister nor matriarch have to be in melee, you can play them as support. Also, you can leave ability to cast select spells when engaged so their passives are still useful, just not the long range stuff. Healing circle, the damage blessing (forgot the name), word of pain, acid breath, veil of torment should be fine.

Also, it must be said that aoe curses also affect your enemies so it can be even dangerous to melee a caster in some cases. Id still say cusrse chance vs reload or armor ignore vs reload is a fair trade, but not both at the same time. Right now you can negate armor with runes and you can do the same with curse chance to an extent, but that still leaves mages with more mobility.

As for spell scaling, many low level spells are outright useless. Why even bother giving an option to cast them if they are a lot worse than simply swinging your weapon in like 99% of the cases? I can live with spellcasters being weak in the beginning, I don't like playing them as melee that gets useless spells for some reason though. I'd trade a part of their melee combat ability for better earlygame spells.

Penalty would work too I suppose. Another annoying thing about casters is that they can target pretty much anyone when engaged. So there's no way to hide your units from them apart from LoS. One other possible tweak would be to allow to cast offensive spells only on one of the units engaging them when in melee.

You could cast in close combat in the tabletop (some spells were useless outside of close combat. I think there was a restriction on magical shooting attacks not being possible, but everything else was allowed.

I think magic missile spells were disallowed in combat and you also could not cast DD spells on units in combat. Buffs/Debuffs allowed on everything. Anyways, current system is not a carbon copy of tabletop in the slightest and I find allowing to cast damage spells on someone 40m away while being locked in close combat a bit too much.